Beautiful India

Do you by any chance know that two of the thirty one District Collectors in Tamil Nadu belong to the Vanniyar Community? And, one of them, Mr. M Jayaraman has been a collector for the second term! There are three SPs from that community. Besides, three Ministers and three Vice-Chancellors belong to the Vanniyar community. The Chairman of the Tamil Nadu Public Service Commission too belongs to the Vanniyar Community.

Then, there are 109 castes in the MBC (Most Backward Class) list. Vanniyars alone constitute 65 lakh out of the 1.23 Crore, which is the total population of the MBC.

These are the ‘significant’ details given by Mu Karunanidhi, Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu in the State Assembly.

This is just an example of the casteless society that we have created forty two years after we obtained independence. The authors of Constitution wanted to build a nation without regard for caste or creed. In fact social equality in the context of our Constitution means the absence of discrimination on the grounds of caste, colour, creed, sex, religion, or language.

The hard reality however is that every activity, every selection in the country is based on exactly these grounds. The sense of caste is in fact becoming sharper by the year.

If our intention is to discourage political parties being formed on caste lines, it is high time we took a firm decision not even to think in terms of caste or creed.

“I have no color prejudices nor caste prejudices nor creed prejudices. All I care to know is that a man is a human being, and that is enough for me; he can’t be any worse,” said Mark Twain.

And, according to Sri Sathya Sai Baba, “Religion means the religion of love. This is the only religion in the world. There is only one caste, the caste of humanity.” Will our leaders ever understand this?